Syria army defectors said to kill 27 soldiers

BEIRUT - Military defectors in Syria killed 27 soldiers Thursday, an opposition group reported, in one of the largest attacks yet on Syrian security forces by a growing armed insurgency.

The opposition group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, based in London, said in a statement that clashes erupted at dawn in and around the city of Daraa, where the anti-government uprising began in March. It said the attackers, armed with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, hit two checkpoints in the countryside and a military base inside the city, suggesting a level of coordination that had not been seen there before.

The Syrian Observatory, which has a network of contacts and informants inside the country, did not specify the sources of the information, and it was unclear from the group's statement whether any of the attackers were killed.

Though the report by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and other activist groups leave an incomplete picture of the situation on the ground in Syria, and it is impossible to verify the reports because of government restrictions on outside reporting, some activists have suggested that parts of those regions have become so hostile that security forces are finding it difficult to enter them.

Word of the soldier killings came as Human Rights Watch released a report Thursday in which it named 74 commanders and officers, identified by former Syrian soldiers, who are responsible for attacks on unarmed protesters.

The report said the commanders are members in Syria's military and intelligence agencies and, according to soldiers who defected and were interviewed by the group, have given orders to carry out widespread killings, torture and unlawful arrests.

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In the report, Human Rights Watch urged the U.N. Security Council to refer the government of President Bashar Assad to the International Criminal Court and to impose sanctions against all officials implicated.

"Defectors gave us names, ranks, and positions of those who gave the orders to shoot and kill, and each and every official named in this report, up to the very highest levels of the Syrian government, should answer for their crimes against the Syrian people," said Anna Neistat, associate director for emergencies at Human Rights Watch, and one of the authors of the report. "The Security Council should ensure accountability by referring Syria to the International Criminal Court."

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